Comcast Would Love to Buy Your Support for Its Proposed Merger with Time Warner

Comcast, Philadelphia’s very own Eye of Sauron, is busy not giving you customer service and trying to convince people that this whole Time Warner isn’t in fact a gigantic tidal wave of shit that only benefits those with a Comcast logo on their paychecks. And what is the best way to convince people that you’re the good guy and you’re on their side? A whole lot of dollars. According to National Journal, a number of groups that have come out in support of the merger have received large donations from the cable giant:

Nine United Way chapters, 12 Big Brothers Big Sisters chapters, 25 Boys & Girls Club chapters, and 14 Urban League chapters all filed comments urging the Federal Communications Commission to approve the merger of the nation’s two largest cable providers. Comcast is a major donor to all four organizations.

The company also received support from diversity groups such as the NAACP, the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans, the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, the Latin American Association, the National Congress of Black Women, the National Urban Indian Family Coalition, 100 Black Men of America, and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

Many of the groups explicitly pointed to Comcast’s support (through corporate donations and employee volunteering) as the reason for supporting the deal.

To be fair to these groups, many of them do not seem to be advocating for Comcast’s great product and customer service and total non-monopoly, they’re just saying, “Hey, Comcast is nice to us, so if they expand to Time Warner’s territories, maybe non-profits there can benefit too.” But Comcast is citing those endorsements as the main reason why you should be totally fine with getting fucked. And it is here where National Journal (and I) would like to remind you that those who do not rely on Comcast for donations pretty much agree that this shouldn’t even be up for debate because holy shit they shouldn’t have even been allowed to buy NBCUniversal in the first place what the fuck is going on?

National Journal spoke to Matt Wood, policy director for advocacy group Free Press, who said that having the non-profits write letters of support is “good politics,” but he doesn’t know “how much they’ve analyzed the loss of innovation and competition that we think a merger would be certain to cause.” I know how much they’ve analyzed that, Matt: Not at all. But that is not their job. That is our job, and it’s not difficult.

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When he's not writing about sports here or ranting about them on Twitter, Jim is probably watching X-Files on Netflix or drinking a beer somewhere. Jim has nothing against hockey, it's just not his style. He once met Duce Staley at a Sixers game.